Jack Bond
by technicolor-werewolf
Summary: A short spin-off of the James Bond conversation you can have with Zero and Para-Medic by Codec in Snake Eater. Para-Medic doesn't want to have to listen to Zero's hero-worship, and Snake figures out how to fix that. Hints at ParaSnake if you look at it right. One-shot, complete.


"…in an attaché case! James Bond is the biggest thing to come out of England since the Mayflower! And furthermore…."

Para-Medic rolled her eyes and cut into the channel so that at least _Snake_ didn't have to hear that. "Thanks a lot."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

She sighed. "You got him started on Bond…I'll get to listen to that for an hour now."

"Sorry," Snake said in his usual gruff undertone, seeming to only half-listen. He was probably still on the alert, busy scanning the forest around him for any sign of an enemy, or…even more probably…something to eat. Not that she minded the questions, really; she liked talking to him.

…and was happy to be of use, of course. Sharing knowledge. Saving his life sometimes, even, for the greater good. It was her job, after all, the only thing really saving her skin at the moment. It was only natural to enjoy doing it well. Building rapport was a side perk, of course; what else?

"I'm used to it," she sighed, doing her best to ignore Zero talking away in the background with only poor Sigint for a real audience now. The man was nodding along politely, but unfortunately that only seemed to encourage the Major. _Great_. "And you should probably get back to the mission, Snake. Good luck." As she ended the call, she grimaced silently and considered just leaving her noise-muffling headphones on, though Zero would probably notice sooner or later. All right, Bond was pretty cool, she _supposed_, but she'd heard this so often now, and for so _long_…

Back in Tselinoyarsk, Snake moved to get back up and continue on, but paused halfway and then returned to a crouch. An hour, huh…that seemed pretty much like torture to him. Surely there was _something_ he could do. Para-Medic was…kind of like a friend, in a way, at least from what remembered that a friend was like. He'd been so close to The Boss and so immersed in his training and his missions for so long that he'd, well, sort of forgotten.

Well – and they were colleagues first and foremost, naturally, so of course she helped him out a lot. And was always there for him…so he really owed her one or two. Saving her from Zero's starry-eyed rambling was the least step he could take toward resolving that. Paying off a debt, you know, and he always paid off his debts, no matter what. Choosing the best camo he had and burying himself in the tall grass – plus unconsciously staying on half-alert to make sure nobody was going to sneak up on him – he reached back up to turn on the codec and dialed Para-Medic's frequency as he had so many times before.

Para-Medic was surprised to hear a call coming back in from Snake so soon, but accepted it gratefully nonetheless, as Zero was already showing signs of trying to turn his attention back on her, sorry but no thank you. "Snake? What is it?"

On the other end of the line, Snake cleared his throat almost awkwardly before speaking. "So – Para-Medic…you know that movie you were talking about the other time…Mozilla, right?"

She grinned to herself, shaking her head. "_God_zilla, Snake."

"Right, Gobzilla." Oh, the man was hopeless – but she had to admit that she liked him well enough all the same. He did have his good qualities, just like everyone else. There was nothing but static for a moment, as if he were stopping to look around – or maybe just to think. There didn't seem to be any real purpose to this call so far except just to have a chat, which admittedly Snake wasn't all that good at, so – why was he suddenly trying this out of the blue? "Didn't you say it might be coming out in the U.S. soon?"

"I hope so!" she said, breaking into an even happier smile. Finally, something _she_ was interested in talking about! "I wish I could go see it in Japan, though, just for the experience! But I wouldn't be able to understand any of it, I guess…"

Snake sounded like he was smiling. "That might be a problem, yeah."

"Just a little one." Para-Medic realized suddenly what he was doing, and giggled. That was really sweet of him – nice, that was. Nice of him. Thoughtful. She liked that about him. "Do you speak any Japanese, Snake?"

"Some…probably not enough for a movie, though. It wasn't really something I thought would be useful."

"What are you talking about? _Everything_ can be useful! You never know when you're going to need something! Why else would you carry so much food and equipment around, for example?"

They kept up the conversation for a while, as long as she felt Snake could reasonably take out of the mission before she shooed him off the codec to continue his progress toward his goal. By that time Zero had thankfully finished his monologue on Bond and didn't even seem to notice that she hadn't been listening. Thank God for Snake. She wondered, briefly, if personalities could be genetic.

Down on the ground, Snake mulled over his conversation with Para-Medic as he made his way slowly from cover to cover, tranquilizing a guard here and there along the way. Very out of character for him, he knew; it wasn't like him to think too long on that kind of thing. But it really had been nice to talk to her, aside from feeling good to help her out.

After this was all resolved, he should probably try to do that more often.


End file.
